how can you tell....

[thewolfman777]

can you tell if l/r is cured by looking at it or do you have to take the word of the guy at the lfs? what is a good visual indicator that l/r is cured/uncured??? does it have a certain smell to it? the reason i ask is that i read in another post that someone was having a problem with his ammo. staying @ .25. my ammo. has seen a spike but has been hanging @ .25 ever since, and my trites are @ .25 in which they have also spiked. my trates are hanging @ 20 and are not moving. i have introduced about 25 lbs. of l/r (supposedly it was cured)during the cycle at different times. could this be a reason that the ammo. is not @ 0 yet? i did buy one piece of l/r out of a tank in which i got all my l/r from with what i am guessing is coraline (it's white and kind of looks like coral) on it and also there are a lot of small pieces in the tank (which I purchased from) with green algae growing on it. is this a good indicator? the tank size is a 33 gal. and i cycled w/ 3 damsels, if this helps. <img src="graemlins//confused.gif" border="0" alt="[confused]" /> <img src="graemlins//freak.gif" border="0" alt="[freak]" /> <img src="graemlins//confused.gif" border="0" alt="[confused]" />

 

[captained]

un-cured rock smells like, well, dead fish. Even cured LR will have some die off, so if you've been regularly adding pieces I wouldn't be surprised if you keep some ammo readings- it takes a while for the bacteria, etc. to build up to the bio-load, so just go slow and wait until it hits zero again before adding anything else.
I just bought 6 ~7lb pieces of cured LR nd I've been adding one a day with no problems...but I keep checking the ammo to be sure. The remaining pieces can stay in the bucket for a month with water changes if need be.

 

[cyn]

If you keep adding things before the cycle is done, the cycle will continue indefinatly. Stop adding things for a little while and I bet your amm. will drop.
HTH,
cyn

 

[thewolfman777]

thanks guys, i did not realize adding l/r during the cycling phase was a bad thing, i actually thought that only pertained to adding fish. thanks for setting the record straight.